Here are three poems by Ciaran Carson from his collection On the Night Watch, which has just come out in North America with Wake Forest University Press (and which was first published in Ireland by Gallery Press). It's another winner from Carson, a radical change in approach and tone that is completely successful. (Just as an aside: of his many compelling works, I find his verse novel For All We Know to be the most compelling of all; I wrote about it here.)

On the Night Watch